One Night, Two Secrets Read online

  “Well, when I was in college... Let’s just say that I didn’t handle being on my own that well. Even though I got straight A’s, I drank and partied way too much. I definitely enjoyed those years but when I was a junior and applied for paid internships, no one would even call me back for an interview. I asked one of the HR hiring managers about it and she said I looked good on paper, but the internet told a different story.

  “That was a huge wake-up call and I knew that I needed to clean up my online presence. Some of my frat brothers were in the same boat so I wrote some code and created an algorithm that would go in and clean it up. It took a long time, my entire junior year, but once I had it and deployed it, I started getting interviews. I started to sell my services to my frat brothers. Once word got out, I had a lot of customers.”

  “I could have used you a few years ago,” she said with a laugh. “Instead I’ve just embraced my more scandalous photos and videos and made them my brand.”

  “That works, too, but sometimes things happen that can really have a negative impact. So I went from helping college kids to helping companies and public figures. I’ve made a few tweaks along the way to keep up with the technology,” he said.

  “And it pays well,” she said.

  “Yeah, it does. Protecting their public image is priceless for some people and businesses. And I provide a service that no one else can,” he said. “I did it for Mauricio after the photo of the two of us came out. But Hadley, of course, had already seen it. I monitor all of my family’s mentions but it’s a soft surveillance. So I just get an alert. I haven’t had to use hard surveillance since my brother-in-law, Jose, passed away.”

  She liked when he talked about his business; she could see his passion for the work he did, and how much he liked it. “Who was Jose and why did you have to monitor him so closely?”

  “He was the famous Formula 1 driver Jose Ruiz... Anyway, he wasn’t faithful to my sister and there were always lots of photos of him partying with other women. I did it to keep that information private. No one needed to know that he wasn’t the perfect husband that he had pretended to be,” Alec said. Alec had built his business around a proprietary code that he used to search the internet for any references to Jose and then replaced the salacious stories with a cleaned up reference that focused on his career and not the affairs.

  She nodded. He was a protector, she thought. That was another plus if he was going to raise their baby. Add that to the fact that he had a big, incredibly nice family—if her afternoon with them was any indication—a good job and an understanding of the power of reputation.

  Now if she could only keep focused on his sterling qualities. But there wasn’t anything that could pry the image of his naked chest from her mind. In fact, going back to bed with him, no matter how wrong, was all she could think about.

  * * *

  Talking about work was leveling him out and taking the edge off his desire for Scarlet. It was still there but not as intense as it had been when they’d first boarded the jet. He felt a bit more in control of himself. It had been a long time since he’d discussed the origins of his company with anyone.

  In fact, he’d forgotten how out of control he’d been those first two years of college. He had pretty much decided that he’d say yes to everything. It had been fun but he’d been so irresponsible. It was only in his junior year that he’d started to become the man he was today. Someone who understood that following every impulse led to destruction.

  But that didn’t stop him from wanting Scarlet. He’d like to say he was a twenty-first-century man who could have a conversation with a woman and get to know her without thinking about sex, but he couldn’t deny the primal instinct that she brought out in him.

  His mom had raised him right and he had a sister so he knew how to treat women. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t times like this when all he wanted to do was say to hell with being polite and see if she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  “What about you? You said your brand embraced scandal, but I’m not that familiar with your story,” he admitted. “Is scandal part of your business plan?” His plan was to keep talking. Then maybe he could get through the flight without making a move on her. If her earlier retreat had sent any signals, it was that she wasn’t ready for anything more between them.

  “I’m not surprised you don’t know my brand. Basically, I have a lifestyle company that is all about embracing your inner... Well, Billie says bitch but we don’t market it that way. It’s called Get-It-Girl. It’s just about not apologizing for being yourself. So I have makeup that is very flattering but might also be too bright for some people. But if that’s what you like, then you can wear the red lippie and the glitter eye shadow. I also have two clothing lines—one’s ‘naughty’ and the other’s ‘nice.’ It recognizes that everyone is a little bit of both,” she said.

  “I love that. I think that Penny exemplifies that split every time I see her. To be honest, Benito does, too. It’s funny that as children we can embrace these different sides while we learn the limits of how to behave.” Penny wasn’t strictly his niece but he and his brothers all treated her as if she were. Extended family was the same as family as far as the Velasquezes were concerned.

  “That’s true. My brand gives you a place to say it’s okay to be you,” she said. “I have the reality show as well where I just live my social media life and cameras follow me around. I try to show both the partying side and the business side, how you can do what you love and still make a living,” she said.

  He’d written her off as a party girl heiress when he’d first researched her but he saw now that she was much more than that. “How did you start out?”

  He suspected that a lot of this had to stem from her relationship with her father. She’d said he wasn’t a good parent to her growing up, and the articles he’d found on the web seemed to support that, even though he knew that the truth was always more complicated than news reports or social media posts.

  “I had a really bad screwup when I was eighteen. A sex tape I made went viral and my sister, Tara, said, ‘That’s it. You’re branded with a scarlet letter now.’ My response was that my name is Scarlet so maybe it was inevitable and I should embrace it,” she said, turning to face him and drawing her legs up on the seat. “Tay said to go for it and I did. I thought if I’m a bad girl in the media, then I could perform in character and control it in a way, even profit from it. You sort of always have to meet that expectation or they go looking for stuff that you don’t want to get out.”

  “I wish I’d met your sister,” he said. “She sounds like she was pretty savvy.”

  “She was, but she was also an idiot. She liked guys that were really bad for her and she never could stay straight.”

  He reached over to squeeze her hand. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s like you were saying. Everyone is complicated.”

  “They are. Did you feel that way about your brother-in-law?” she asked. “Everyone is always trying not to speak ill of the dead, but you didn’t sugarcoat it with him.”

  “No, I didn’t. I really looked up to him when he and Bianca married but when I saw that first photo... I was so angry. I confronted him, and he said that Bianca knew the score. But I knew my sister. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would be happy with a man who cheated on her.”

  “I don’t know many women who would be,” Scarlet said.

  “I agree,” he said. “Jose said that it’s in men’s natures to be promiscuous.”

  “Do you agree with him?”

  “No, I don’t. I think if you find the right woman, she fills that emptiness and you don’t have to keep looking,” Alec said. “What about you?”

  “Hmm... I’m not sure. My dad certainly has never found the One, and Tara didn’t, either.”

  “I didn’t ask about them. I want to know if you think you can find it in one man or if you are always l
ooking for something else.”

  Eight

  His question didn’t leave much room for anything other than bluntness. “I have no idea.”

  “Fair enough. I’m just trying to get things straight in my head. I mean a baby isn’t going to wait around for the two of us to figure our stuff out, and I do better when I have time to plan,” he admitted.

  She fidgeted a bit before she realized what she was doing. She needed to stop letting him rattle her, but the truth was she wasn’t herself. She hadn’t been for a really long time...since Tara’s death. But she’d been faking it pretty well until now.

  Was it Alejandro who was responsible for the change or was it the baby?

  Or both?

  She had no idea. She didn’t like to do too much introspection because frankly most days she didn’t like herself... That was it, wasn’t it? The truth of who she’d become: someone who put on a fake show for the media and then played that part until she fell into an exhausted sleep, haunted by her dead sister.

  Damn.

  She was a bigger mess than she thought.

  “I don’t know that we’re ever going to come up with a plan that will make sense,” she admitted.

  “Me neither,” he said. “I keep trying to wrap my head around having a baby... I’m not going to lie. It’s scaring the shit out of me. I mean, I have a nephew but honestly, I don’t really spend that much time with kids. Hell, I don’t really spend much time with adults who I’m not working with.”

  She had to laugh at the way he said it. She heard the panic in his voice and it made her feel a little better that he wasn’t all cool with everything, either.

  “Don’t worry, that part I’m good at...not kids but adults,” she said, shifting in the large seat and stretching her legs. Lulu was still sleeping in her crate and would probably be content until they landed.

  “We should make a list of pros and cons of us becoming parents,” he said, pulling his tablet toward him.

  She reached over and took it from him, then tucked it behind her on the seat. “No. We’re not doing that. We have the rest of this week to spend with each other and we’ll learn enough then to figure out what we should do next. Honestly, I thought I’d tell you—I mean, Mauricio—about the baby and then because you, or rather, he was Humanitarian of the Year I’d hand the baby over and he’d raise it. That way it would have a happy, well-adjusted life.”

  He shook his head. “I really screwed up this time.”

  “Hey, we both were there that night. You know I wish you’d been honest but no use rehashing that. We’ll figure this out.”

  “I hope so. I don’t want to be the reason a kid is messed up,” he said.

  “Me neither. As I mentioned, my family isn’t the greatest when it comes to providing a happy, nurturing home but I still don’t want to give up the baby unless we can’t figure out a way to raise it.”

  “You’d give it up?”

  “If it meant making sure the child didn’t end up like my father or sister, then yes.”

  She realized that sounded harsh. It was the first time she’d actually said it out loud but in her heart she’d felt that way for a long time. She’d loved Tara more than she’d ever loved anyone on the planet but she’d been so broken, so flawed and it had been so heartbreaking to not be able to help her.

  She wouldn’t go through that again. She wanted her child to grow up safe and secure...whole. She’d failed Tara and had wanted to save her. Losing Tara had shattered something in her and she was afraid of doing the same thing with her baby.

  “We’re going to figure this out,” he said, the conviction he’d had since the moment he’d found out about her pregnancy...well, after he’d determined that he must be the father.

  “That’s all I want,” she admitted. “I want to get this sorted out before I have to return to New York and start filming my show again.”

  “When is that?” he asked.

  “About three months’ time,” she said. “I can put them off for a few weeks, but everything hinges on my show. I see increased sales in merchandise when it airs. My company employs about twenty-five people so I can’t flake on them.”

  “No problem. I’m hoping this week will give us both the answers we want. I know I want to get to know you better and I hope you’ll see that I’m not as craven as I might have seemed at first when I lied about who I was.”

  “I’m already seeing it,” she said. No use hiding the truth from him. Billie always said she had no filter, which also meant she had no walls up to protect herself. But honestly she couldn’t stand fake emotion in her real life. She spent so much time projecting an image to the world via her media channels that when she had downtime she had to be real.

  “Good,” he said. “I am, too. I had no idea how honest you would be about everything. I sort of expected you to think about how it would affect your follows and stuff like that.”

  She shook her head and shifted away from him. “I’m not like that. I mean I do have to be aware of how I look and the image I present but I’m not shallow.”

  “I know. That’s what I was trying to say. I’m really good at putting my foot in it and saying the wrong things, but believe me, my intent is never to be an ass.”

  She had to smile at that. She noticed he used self-deprecation a lot to divert tension. She wasn’t sure if it was sincere or if that was his way of pushing any blame away from himself. For now, she was going to take it at face value but it was something for her to watch.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “So what do you usually do during the flight?”

  “Work,” he said.

  “Work?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Or work out. I have a treadmill in the bedroom.”

  She shook her head. He was surprising. She hadn’t pegged him for a workaholic but as she looked around the aircraft she could see it was set up as an office. She also noticed a client entertainment area.

  “Well... What are we going to do?”

  “Whatever you want,” he said.

  Whatever she wanted... Now that was dangerous invitation.

  * * *

  He hadn’t expected to find himself sitting across his conference table from her with a deck of cards between them. But then everything about Scarlet was unexpected so maybe he should stop trying to anticipate what she’d do.

  He, his brothers and their friends had a monthly poker game in Cole’s Hill and he was pretty good at reading them. They’d played together since high school when they’d thought they were cooler than they actually had been. But Scarlet was completely different. It was harder for him to find her tells. And not just because she had a pretty good poker face, but because she distracted him.

  She’d braided her long blond hair, but tendrils had escaped, with one of them brushing against the side of her face. She kept reaching up and tucking the strand behind her ear, which fascinated him. He’d seen his sister, Bianca, do the same thing, but it had never seemed as interesting as when Scarlet did it.

  “I’ll raise you a protein bar and two Hershey’s Kisses,” she said, pushing the snacks toward the middle of the table.

  He arched one eyebrow at her. “That’s a pretty steep bet.”

  “It is... Though I have heard that you should never wager anything you don’t want to lose, so if you really want to keep your protein bar you should fold.”

  He shook his head. “No way. I’m sort of an all-in kind of guy.”

  “Are you?” she asked. “You seem like an I-don’t-place-a-bet-unless-I’m-going-to-win kind of guy.”

  “Possibly,” he said with a shrug. “In life, definitely, but when it comes to cards I have a different set of rules.”

  She nodded. “You’re all about the rules, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t think she meant that as a good thing and thought maybe he should hedge his ans
wer. But when she’d been brutally honest about her family, he’d decided to do the same with her. Keep it real instead of trying to protect himself from letting her see too much of who he was. “I know it makes me sound like an old fart, but I am about the rules. Life is just so much easier when we all know what to expect.”

  “Why break them the night of the gala, then? And who called you an old fart?” she asked, laughing. “I mean I haven’t exactly seen that side of you. At the gala you were definitely not acting like a stick-in-the-mud.”

  “My brothers and Bianca call me that. But that’s just because they usually don’t follow the rules and end up in trouble. The night of the gala... I don’t know, I guess I just felt like I could let go because no one knew it was me. It gave me a chance to just let my guard down. And I imitated Alec the night of the gala because he needed me. I can’t turn down family.”

  “That’s sweet. I liked you at the gala,” she said.

  “You did?” he asked, leaning across the table. He wanted her so badly that every inhalation was almost painful. He could smell her perfume. His senses were overwhelmed with everything that was Scarlet. He struggled to keep his eyes off the curves of her body and that damned strand of hair she kept tucking behind her ear. He knew if he shifted his legs under the table he’d brush against her; he had done it twice already and had the feeling she’d catch on to what he was doing if he did it again.

  He was trying but it was hard. He was hard, and he wanted nothing more than to forget all the rules that he applied to his life to keep it orderly, sweep her into his arms and carry her into the bedroom at the back of the plane.

  “I did,” she said.

  He groaned.

  “What?”

  “You’re not making this easy.”

  “Making what easy?”

  “Just sticking to my own tips for not screwing things up with you any further than I already have,” he said.